The Salvation

Mads Mikkelsen in The Salvation
Kristian Levring's The Salvation is a competent, if unexceptional revenge Western. Within minutes of reuniting with his bride and son, Mads Mikkelsen's Danish emigrant sees them snatched away by outlaws who massacre them. Mads exacts his pitiless revenge by the end of the second reel, but one of the miscreants has a brother, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who vows to bring Mads to justice. Eva Green is on hand as Morgan's sister-in-law. A mute, whose tongue has been cut out by Injuns, she eventually turns against Morgan and becomes Mads' ally. 

Levring coaxes good work out of his principals and paints a suitably somber setting for his revenge saga. Set design is particularly strong as the paucity of life on the frontier in the 1870s is accurately rendered. But to what end? I found the proceedings only mildly diverting with little thematic impact. Levring has made a workmanlike B Western, but its impact is fleeting. (3/12/17)


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